Evening Standard Comment: New airport security - the price of freedom

Those preparing to fly on holiday this month may be dismayed by the latest anti-terror measures at airports. Security is being tightened for direct flights to the US after reports that al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Syria and Yemen may be planning new attacks. Details are sketchy, though there have been suggestions that a new wave of bombings might involve devices made of all-plastic parts or planted in the bodies of suicide bombers. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has ruled out “significant disruption”, though the risk, as with the ban on liquids in hand luggage from 2006, is that such measures become blanket bans affecting all air travellers.

In truth, this development simply reminds us of the continued high state of alert of the security apparatus against Islamist terrorism — the new norm since the 9/11 attacks of 2001. Terror innovations such as body bombs have been warned of by intelligence sources, while attacks on planes, especially ones bound for the US, remain the target of choice for many terrorists. That is not likely to change any time soon. Senior police officers have warned for years of a threat to the UK lasting decades; these measures are just the latest phase of our response to it.

That threat will evolve. The next big challenge is jihadis returning from Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile we have seen the al Qaeda threat morph from foreign-trained cells to “lone wolf” attacks by radicalised individuals such as the killers of Drummer Lee Rigby last year. Yet it is also important to remember how successful our police and intelligence services have been against the terrorists, foiling dozens of plots and successfully bringing others to trial. We can win against the extremists. But to do so, heightened security will be the norm for a long time yet.

FGM is torture

Today's warnings from the Home Affairs Committee on female genital mutilation are timely. Its powerful report calls FGM an “ongoing national scandal”. But in particular it warns that “misplaced concerns” among front-line professionals, such as doctors and teachers, about challenging traditional practices in some ethnic communities are “one of the main reasons” for inaction. Such concern over “cultural sensitivities” is mistaken.

First, FGM has no basis in Islam: as the Muslim Council of Britain pointed out last month, launching a campaign against the practice, it in fact runs contrary to a fundamental Islamic principle, that believers should not harm themselves or others. But in any case, just because certain practices are culturally acceptable in some societies, that does not mean we should accept them — in the UK or anywhere else. As Home Affairs Committee chair Keith Vaz puts it: “FGM is not cultural it is criminal, it is not tribal it is torture.” All those on the front line should take a stand to spare thousands of girls in Britain the pain and suffering involved in this barbaric practice.

Poetic justice

Novelist Kathy Lette’s new weapon in the campaign against Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s ban on books being sent to prisoners is subtle but could prove deadly. She has given Mr Grayling’s name to the main villain in her forthcoming novel, and is encouraging other writers to vilify the Tory minister in similar fashion: poetic justice, she says. The campaign is right. Prisoners have shockingly low average literacy levels, and reading should be one of the main ways of helping rehabilitate them. Reading transforms lives: Mr Grayling is wrong to restrict prisoners’ access to books.